This discussion focuses on the Central African Republic since the 15th century. For a treatment of the country in its regional context, see Central Africa.

Diamond prospectors in the Central African Republic have found polished flint and quartz tools that are at least 8,000 years old. About 2,500 years ago local farmers set up megaliths weighing several tons each near Bouar. The cooperation necessary to make and position these monuments suggests that they were built by fairly large social units. By the 15th century ADCEvarious groups speaking languages related to those of the present day were living in the area. These peoples lived in relatively isolated small settlements, where they hunted and cleared land for cultivation using the slash-and-burn method. The region also produced such states as Dar al-Kuti, Zande, and Bandi, all founded in the 19th century.

The region of the Central African Republic was not directly connected to external commercial routes until the 17th century. At that time, slavery became an important factor in Central African history as Arabic-speaking slave traders extended the trans-Saharan and Nile River trade routes into the region. Before the mid 19th century these slave traders’ captives were sent to North Africa, where they were eventually sold to countries such as Egypt or Turkey or down the Ubangi and Congo rivers to the Atlantic coast to slave ships that transported them to the Americas.

Later in the mid 19th century the Bobangi people from the Ubangi River area, who had become major slave traders, raided the nearby Baya and Mandjia peoples for captives. In exchange for captives, the slave traders received arms, which allowed them to continue to raid for more slaves. Though these raids largely ended by the end of the century, they continued in the north until 1912 when Dar al-Kuti fell. The slave trade disrupted the societies in its wake and depopulated the region. It also created lasting tensions between ethnic groups. The ruling elite is still resented today by many in Central Africa because they tend to come from riverine groups akin to the Bobangi.

The colonial era

During the last two decades of the 19th century, Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, and France competed for control of equatorial Africa. Belgium, Germany, and France each wanted the region that would eventually become the Central African Republic. The French were ultimately successful and named it the French Congo (later French Equatorial Africa), with its capital at Brazzaville. The French colonies included Ubangi-Shari (Oubangui-Chari; which later became the Central African Republic), Chad, Gabon, and the Middle Congo (which became the Republic of the Congo).

The French government leased large tracts of land to private European companies in order to avoid paying for the development of its Central African possessions; it also placed few controls on their activities. In exchange for an annual rent, these firms exploited the land and dominated the people. Company overseers forced both men and women to gather wild rubber, hunt for ivory and animal skins, and work on plantations. Unable to cultivate their own fields because of the labour demands from European companies, they experienced food shortages and famine. Because they were forced to work in new environments where they were exposed to sleeping sickness, new strains of malaria, and other diseases, the death rate substantially increased.

By the beginning of the 20th century, frontiers had been established for the Ubangi-Shari colony by the European powers. Many Africans resisted French control, and several military expeditions in the first decade of the century were needed to crush their opposition. The Kongo-Wara rebellion (1928–31) was a widespread, though unsuccessful, anticolonial uprising in the western and southwestern parts of the colony. After it was suppressed, its leaders were imprisoned and executed and populations of Central Africans were forcibly relocated to colonially designated villages where they could be supervised.

The French colonial administration did create a network of roads and a mobile health system in Ubangi-Shari to fight disease, and Roman Catholic churches set up schools and medical clinics. However, the French also used the Central Africans for forced labour to increase the cultivation of cotton and coffee, as well as of food crops to supply French troops and labour crews. The French conscripted Central Africans and sent them to southern Congo to construct the Congo-Ocean Railway, which linked Congo to Pointe-Noire.

During World War II , French General Gen. Charles de Gaulle called on the residents of the colonial territories to help fight the Germans, and 3,000 responded from Central Africa. After the war these troops returned to their homeland with a new sense of pride and a national, rather than ethnic, identity. After the war de Gaulle organized the French Union and created new local assemblies—consisting of French colonists and a handful of Africans—with regional political representatives. In November 1946 Barthélemy Boganda became the first Central African elected to the French National Assembly.

Independence

The struggle for leadership

Boganda was a Roman Catholic priest, but he left the priesthood and formed the Social Evolution Movement of Black Africa (Mouvement pour l’Évolution Sociale de l’Afrique Noire; MESAN). MESAN gained control of the Territorial Assembly in 1957, and Boganda became president of the Grand Council of French Equatorial Africa. Boganda hoped that the French territories of Chad, Gabon, Congo, and Ubangi-Shari could form a single nation. When the others rejected the unification plan, Boganda reluctantly agreed to accept the new constitution offered to Ubangi-Shari by France.

After Boganda’s death in March 1959, David Dacko, a government member who claimed a family relationship to Boganda, became president. Ubangi-Shari, renamed the Central African Republic, was granted independence on August 13, 1960. Dacko permitted the French to provide the new country with assistance in the areas of trade, defense, and foreign relations. He also added government positions to reward his supporters and increased a number of their salaries, which drained the national budget.

Dacko made MESAN the only legal national political party in 1962. He thus ran unopposed in the elections of early 1964 and was formally elected president. The economy declined rapidly, and the national debt soared. In December 1965—amid impending bankruptcy and a threatened nationwide strike—the commander of the army, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, replaced Dacko in a staged coup.

Bokassa abolished the constitution, dissolved the legislature, and turned over administrative duties to his appointed cabinet; he allowed no opposition. His one forward-thinking act was to appoint Elizabeth Domitien, a prosperous businesswoman, as the country’s (and sub-Saharan Africa’s) first female prime minister in 1975. France continued to support him and the country’s faltering economy because it wanted to retain control of the diamond (and potential uranium) output of the country. Bokassa declared himself president for life in 1972. Four years later he proclaimed himself emperor of the Central African Empire and was crowned the following year as Emperor Bokassa I with lavish ceremonies financed largely by France. While the government’s debt mounted, most of the profits for the nation’s diamond trade, which was personally administered by Bokassa, remained with Bokassa. Finally, in September 1979, the French government removed Bokassa—he was eventually allowed to live in France—and restored Dacko as president.

Authoritarian rule under Kolingba

Dacko’s return was not well received. To maintain his power, Dacko was forced to rely on French paratroops and on administrative officials who had also served in Bokassa’s government. As opposition grew, followed by labour strikes and bomb attacks, Dacko increasingly depended on the army to retain power. Finally, in September 1981, General Gen. André Kolingba removed Dacko from office in a bloodless coup and established a military government.

The government remained almost completely in military hands until 1985, when Kolingba dissolved the military committee that had ruled the country since the coup and named a new 25-member cabinet that included a few civilians. Under pressure from the World Bank and other international organizations, the National Assembly approved a new constitution early in 1986, adopted following a referendum later that year. Legislative elections were held in July 1987, but the government continued to operate under the direct control of Kolingba, who effectively held all executive and legislative power in the nation.

By the early 1990s Central Africa had become increasingly intolerant of Kolingba’s authoritarian control and his lavish lifestyle. Growing democratic movements elsewhere in Africa had gained strength and inspired Central Africans to take action. Riots broke out in 1991, after civil servants had not been paid in more than eight months. It took two more years for Kolingba to give in to demands for open elections, when he allowed other parties to form and slate their own candidates for the presidency. Although he ran for president, Kolingba was rejected by the voters during the first round of balloting. Instead, Ange-Félix Patassé, a former prime minister, became the first democratically elected president since independence as the leader of the Central African People’s Liberation Movement (Mouvement pour la Libération du Peuple Centrafricain; MLPC).

Patassé and the quest for democracy

Patassé’s tenure as president was far from peaceful. Inheriting a nearly bankrupt treasury and disgruntled civil servants who were still owed back wages, his government endured much civil unrest. Unpaid military factions attempted to stage coups three times in 1996, and Bangui was repeatedly looted, resulting in a significant loss of infrastructure and businesses. Bandit attacks by similar factions in the provinces contributed to unrest there as well as to the interruption of trade and agricultural production. The Patassé government and the military also failed to respect the rights of its citizens. For instance, following the 1996–97 looting, the police created the Squad for the Repression of Banditry and sanctioned the execution of criminals the day after their apprehension. The squad tortured and executed more than 20 suspected bandits without trial. The government also failed to call local elections in the late 1990s, claiming that it was unable to finance them.

The Patassé government, opposition parties, and religious groups signed the Bangui Accords in January 1997. The accords were a series of measures designed to reconcile competing political factions, reform and strengthen the economy, and restructure the military. Although the agreement did not restore peace to the country, French involvement in the Central African Republic ended in October 1997 when France withdrew its troops from Bangui and closed its long-standing military base in Bouar. The United Nations took over the peacekeeping mission and six months later sent in troops under the UN Mission to the Central African Republic (MINURCA). MINURCA’s mission was to maintain stability and security, mediate between rival factions in the country, and provide advice and support in the 1998 legislative elections.

In late 1998 the MLPC narrowly retained its majority in the National Assembly when one opposition legislator changed his affiliation. Opposition parties strenuously opposed this change and protested, but MINURCA helped to restore order, and the National Assembly again reconvened. Patassé was reelected in September 1999, and MINURCA continued its peacekeeping operations until February 2000.

The 21st century

The government continued to be plagued by protests over its continuing inability to pay civil servants and the military at the beginning of the new millennium. Attempted military overthrows that troubled the country in the mid-1990s also continued into the 21st century, culminating in the ouster of Patassé in a 2003 coup by former army chief General Gen. Franƈois Bozizé. Bozizé’s transitional government oversaw the drafting of a new constitution that was approved in late 2004 and democratic elections in 2005, in which Bozizé was elected president.

In June 2005, fighting between government and rebel forces in the north caused tens of thousands of people to flee across the border into Chad; this continued in the ensuing years. The north was also subject to violence that emanated from conflict in the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan and spilled over the border.

The next presidential election, initially due in 2010, was repeatedly postponed. When it did take place, on Jan. 23, 2011, Bozizé and Patassé were both among the candidates. Polling did not go smoothly; before the election results were announced, Patassé and other challengers to Bozizé had lodged complaints that the election was rigged. When the results were announced in early February, Bozizé was declared the winner, with 66 percent of the vote.